RangerDave wrote:
I'm always a bit amused/exasperated by the level of public scrutiny and outrage over flimsy evidence and alleged prosecutorial shenanigans with these high profile cases, particularly when the people who are outraged are conservatives (who tend to be pro-cop, pro-prosecutor, law-and-order types generally). It's like, "Jesus Christ, people! Are you really so clueless that you think this is a particularly egregious example of a defendant getting railroaded? The guy has a multi-$100k defense and massive amounts of media coverage. You want to see railroading, take a look at the millions of indigent defendants with nothing more than a PD to rubber-stamp whatever **** plea the prosecution deigns to offer them." But no, instead these people get all outraged at this or that high-profile case while continuing to roll their eyes at every convicted felon and/or death row inmate who claims he was railroaded and voting for politicians who promise to "toughen up" the laws, expand police and prosecutorial powers, curtail appeals, etc.
The only reason this is a high-profile case at all is because A) there is real dispute as to facts and law and B) the attempt to railroad Zimmerman in the media before the trial even began. You were one of the ones "betting dollars to donuts" on what actually happened, and now that it's all coming apart and the prosecutor is making a spectacle of themsevles, the only thing you can think to do is ***** that conservatives are... paying attention to a high profile case.
However, I've actually seen these poor people with the public defenders, and there's a reason public defenders suck - it's because their clients suck and most of them are near-indefensible. My father was not a public defender, but he did take hundreds of cases for indigent clients as a court-appointed attorney over the years, and he explained to me that probably 9 out of 10 there was simply nothing that could be done except try to cut a plea bargain and try to say something good about them to the judge at sentencing. There really was no question of either fact or law upon which to base a trial defense. Nevertheless some would insist on trial, then wonder why they were defeated so soundly - because the only thing they were pinning their hopes on was either an earnest belief that what they did wasn't or shouldn't have been illegal when it was, or else some flimsy idea that someone, somewhere along the line must have done something to allow them to get off on a technicality that they are sure exists because they heard it was like that on the street or on TV.
Public defenders are faced with the impossible task of, for the most part, mitigating the consequences to criminals who, for the most part, didn't really even try to avoid detection. Maybe about 10% actually have a chance of winning their case, either because they are actually innocent, or because there really is reasonable doubt. If prosecutorial seal or misconduct occurs, it's in not recognizing the 10% because they are so used to dealing with the other 90% and plea-bargaining all the time because there really just isn't time or money to try all these cases.
Most of the people that get "railroaded" are only so in their own minds. Yes, there are exceptions, and sometimes public defenders don't do a very good job, but that, for the most part, is because they get in a rut - most of their clients are so hopelessly indefensible that they fail to realize when one isn't, and even then it may not be easy to find the right witnesses or information ebcause they're looking for "Cheeno" who knows where their client was that night, but they can't find him because that's his street name, and no one, including the client, knows that Cheeno's real name is Bob Smith or where he lives.
George Zimmerman could very well have been that guy. Had Martin been white, or Zimmerman black, we would never have heard of this case. As it is, that high-profile case is Zimmerman's real hope - he lost his job and his defense could cost upward of $1,000,000. Is it fair that he gets this attention, and other people don't? Maybe not, but the fact is that he has received attention, and he is a perfect example of a guy that could easily have ended up in prison because he couldn't afford a defense. If we don't address these issues for the high profile cases, we won't for the low.
As for the media coverage... most criminal defendants do not have the national news trying to drum up public outrage by tampering with the story presented to the public.
Most of your felons and death row inmates that claim to have been "railroaded" were so only in their own mind. That's the biggest problem with advocates for those people, as well as prison reform advocates in general. They are utterly credulous of anything a convict says, and utterly suspicious of anything to the contrary. It's particularly hilarious when they start bemoaning the conditions in prisons, and every guy they interview is some poor innocent railroaded soul who constantly gets assraped by the "real" felons. Suspiciously, they never actually seem to find the actual felons, nor the ones doing the assraping in their interviews. Maybe it's the guy with a swastika and a penis tattoo on his forehead. No no, he's a victim of the system too, and was just an honest citizen who only decided he was a nazi-penis fanatic when he got railroaded by the system.
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